Photo by Phil Long, MIT. Performance by Red {an orchestra}, live from the Masonic Auditorium in Cleveland, streamed to multiple sims in Second Life, and viewed by the photographer from his home in Boston. My name is Stacy Surla, I&apos;m an information architect, and my topic is using gaming platforms for telepresencing.

A number of converging market and demographic factors are resulting in increased interest in using SG in areas such as education, health, ecology, public policy, science, government and corporate training

A number of corporations are taking the first steps and commissioning SG development recognizing they need to consider this approach to provide more effective learning content

PricewaterhouseCoopers' Media Outlook Report forecasts major growth for the video game sector worldwide

By 2011, the worldwide gaming market will be worth $48.9 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 9.1% during the five-year period. They handily exceed the 6.4% advance that PwC eyes for the overall entertainment economy during the period.

Its data include consumer spending on games, but not on hardware and accessories

Business Environment

Key growth engines will include online and wireless games, new-generation consoles, as well as in-game advertising

In the U.S., online and wireless games should see the biggest gains through 2011. Online will expand from $1.1 billion market last year to $2.7 billion in 2011, and wireless will double from $499 million to $1 billion

In-game advertising will be a key spark for U.S. gaming revenue, growing from an estimated $80 million last year to $950 million in 2011

Asia Pacific should remain the region with the highest overall spending on gaming during the period and reach $18.8 billion in 2011. Despite its leading size, its 10% average annual gains will only be exceeded by the combined region of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which is pegged for a 10.2% compound annual gain and set to remain at No. 2 in worldwide gaming

For 2006, PwC's preliminary estimates are for the U.S. gaming market to have expanded 10.6% to $9 billion, and it expects the first-ever jump beyond the $10 billion mark this year to about $10.4 billion.

Worldwide game spending jumped 14.3% to $31.6 billion in 2006 and should rise 18.5% to $37.5 billion this year, according to the preliminary data.

The overall gaming audience continues to expand and become somewhat more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and games becoming an &quot;important part of culture&quot;

My conservative estimate: the Serious Games Market would be ranging between $200 - 400 million per year

There is now an emergent supply chain for Corporate Serious Games, with a number of corporations commissioning SG development, which could easily make available additional $ 400 - 600 million per year.

The same applies to Healthcare providers (e.g., training for surgery, for emergency medical response, and for managing surgical teams), bringing the overall figure for the Serious Games market close to $ 1.5 billion in 2008

As Serious Games are Gaining Solid Traction in Europe and the video game industry is finding more and more business outside the entertainment sector, this figure could rise to $ 2 billion shortly

Although this is small potatoes in comparison to the total videogame market, the Serious Games segment has been showing healthy double-digit growth over the past five years, and shall accelerate rapidly as it is getting a foothold in the corporate market.

Result of a market survey with all key stake-holders across the supply chain, include the revelation that the majority of corporations, learning suppliers and established SG suppliers foresee ‘learning games’ not only being adopted but becoming mainstream by 2012

Also a resounding 100% of corporations surveyed see the value of using game-based learning within their organizations

...whilst corporations and schools are finding them invaluable as learning content … and NGOs and marketing organizations find that their message are conveyed in a more productive – and enjoyable way

In the commercial arena, SG is going mainstream. More and more companies are announcing a significant increase in their annual revenue derived from the SG contribution, whilst some of them report they made more in revenue from its serious side than from its entertainment side

The SG market will not be as easily formed as the commercial games market was

The market is much more B2B oriented, where the majority of projects are &quot;work-for-hire&quot; or single-use efforts like those seen in traditional business software industries. Unlike B2C, organizations are slower moving when adopting new paradigms

Nevertheless, SG developers see a lot of room for growth in their marketplace

SG used to lack the budgets of entertainment games and were made for a fraction of the cost and time of games for the entertainment market, with budgets in the range of $400,000-$1 million being typical, and a development time of perhaps a year

However, budgets for certain applications seem to be increasing. We’re now seeing some SG being budgeted in the $10 million range, and above

Growing budgets may translate into a growing demand for private equity funding, mostly because the predominant model in SG so far has been &quot;work-for-hire&quot;, which do not leverage on economies of scale